In Your Blood, Brain, Soul
by Mirus Infidus
Summary: The disease is strong and the doctors are useless. And he knows he'll die of an illness in the end.


I'm not well.

There are spots on my tongue. I saw a doctor. He said I was fine. But the spots won't go away.

Sometimes it feels hard to breathe. And my hands shake. And I feel faint.

I'm sick.

I'm very sick.

I used to pass by the diseased beggars every day. I must have caught this from one of them.

I saw another doctor. He told me to drink water and get lots of rest. He said it was nerves.

It's not nerves. Nerves don't make you feel like you're turning inside out or make your head swim or suck all the strength from your limbs.

I can feel the disease inside me, swimming through my blood and destroying me slowly. Its poison stabs me, seeping down from my fingertips to the pit of my stomach. It burns just under my skin and I can feel it clawing to get out, to escape, to make a complete takeover. Sometimes it feels really close. I know that pretty soon it'll burst free and take no prisoners.

I'm very sick.

I'm dying.

I'm a dead man walking and there's nothing I can do about it. "It's just a case of nerves." "You're absolutely fine." "Nothing's wrong." "You seem perfectly healthy to me." "I know better than you about these things." "Believe me." "Trust me." "Don't worry."

I really do want to believe the doctors. I want to trust them. I don't want to worry. And for a couple days after I see a doctor, I feel fine.

But then it always comes back. You can't wish away disease, no matter how much you believe. The spots on my tongue are looking a ghastly pale, and more often than not I've got a headache and I just want to sit down.

I know I'm doomed. The gods have already written my ending, and they've put it in an envelope, and any day now it'll arrive on my doorstep, and that'll be curtains for me.

What do you do when you're already dead? You try your best to live.

I don't want to worry anyone. They have enough worries as it is.

I want my friends to be happy. When we're all together and everyone's laughing and singing and chatting and for a rare moment we don't feel like we're staring down the barrel of a gun and just praying that it's not loaded, I'm able to forget that I'm probably not going to see my next birthday, or anyone else's, and my stomach doesn't hurt so much, and my hands don't shake, and my head doesn't feel like someone's plowing a drill into it.

Like when Jehan is composing a poem about Combeferre's big feet. Or Grantaire is teaching Feuilly how to bounce a coin into a cup. Or Courfeyrac is telling the story about the time he brought a girl home and she had a rabbit hidden in her sleeve. And everybody's smiling and happy and hopeful.

Those are the moments I love. I'd give anything to keep the smiles on their faces.

In the back of my mind there's a little voice, though, one that I try to ignore, to lock away in a box and feed to crocodiles, and it tells me that the smiles won't be there forever. Because sooner rather than later there's going to be a war. Because we're gaining power and support, and we're becoming a threat.

I'm not the only sick one. This whole country is sick. And try as we may to fight the disease, the symptoms are growing stronger, and the disease is getting hard to ignore, and the doctors are useless, and soon the entire body will be infected with something black and slimy that leaves a sour taste in the mouth and a ringing in the ears.

I know that disease will be my death.

**A/N**:_ I've been wanting to write something about Joly's hypochondriasis for a while. The disorder is just so fascinating; seriously, I could write a book just about a person dealing with hypochondriasis. So, that's where this came from. This started as just a little something about Joly dealing with hypochondriasis, and then it turned into something else. (And I really wanted to call this 'Hypochondriasis and Me', but since he doesn't know he's a hypochondriac, it wouldn't really work :/ and thus it ends up being a bad Next to Normal reference.)_


End file.
